Genetic and Cultural Differences between Jews and Greeks

[Angela]

Because the same study shows that they may be as much as 60% South European. And 15% Eastern European. That looks pretty similar to the Greeks to me.

If you look with a broad, general, and not very educated lens, the Hungarians and the more northern and northeastern French share roughly the same proportions of ancient ancestral groups. They even plot near each other on a PCA, which measures TWO dimensions let's not forget.

Is anyone going to try to say with a straight face that the Hungarians and the French are the same people, who shared the same genetic history and same culture????

It's utter nonsense.

It's time to get out the history and historical culture books again too. There were no more antithetical and opposed world views, philosophies etc. than those of the Greeks and the Jews. What was valued by one was anathema to the other.

No one's ever heard about the massive revolts by the Jews against their Greek overlords and their statues, and multiple gods,and licentious arenas and sports activities, and even their so-called philosophy? The Maccabees don't ring a bell?

Was there a gradual accommodation of sorts? Did some Jewish scholars write in Greek and try to incorporate Greek thought? Yes.

To say the cultures became similar or anything close to it is ridiculous.

Good grief. What are people doing pontificating on these topics when they don't have the most basic grounding in the history of these times and places.

 

[ratchet_fan]

He left this site because the absurdity of a lot of his claims was pointed out. Of course there was some gene flow from Jews into Italians, and vice versa, at least until Draconian laws against intermarriage were instituted.

When the Spaniards took over control and brought in the "Holy" Inquisition and started expelling Jews from Southern Italy, I'm absolutely sure, and there are documents to show it, that some Jews converted and remained. That kind of event isn't, however, going to fundamentally change the genetic signature of a people, although it may make some changes around the edges. Sicily, likewise, was under Muslim rule for two centuries. Yes, most of them were exiled under Frederick II. Does that mean some didn't escape the net, especially if they had been long resident on Sicily and had assimilated centuries before.

That's why the Iberian attitude toward this is difficult for me to understand. I know of many books by Italians on the Muslim occupation and its impact on Sicily, and while obviously the conquest and death, the discrimination is criticized, the many benefits they brought to the island are also acknowledged. I have yet to find one written in Spanish about Spain. I guess it depends what you're taught in school, or how your national "myth" is framed. Personally, I may believe that the Langobardian influence on Italy genetically is overblown, especially looking at y dna lines, but it exists, and so does the cultural impact, whether I like it or not.

What I don't like in particular is all this "ethnic" appropriation that is going on, and the different rules for different groups, and the mania for finding more "exotic" ancestry in certain groups than exists, ancestry that is found not necessarily in academic papers but in their own modeling.

Well, we know how that worked out with the Etruscans.

Historians and Archaeologists should never be discounted.

I still don't understand Davidski's gripe, however.

What does he care how similar Greeks and Jews might be?

Parenthetically, those Southern Jews from whom some confused Italians or pretend Italians want to claim descent are not Ashkenazim, who formed from an amalgam of different groups. I guess the closest you could come is to say they're sort of Sephardi in some way.

I don't think Davidski cares. But to some degree I kind of understand his gripes with academia. Some of the models need be be taken with a grain of salt. Even some peer reviewed stuff is clearly suspect. Like using Levant_N to model farmer ancestry in Fataynovo. Or that paper from a couple years ago claiming the French are 25% East Asian. Or the other paper claiming West Eurasian ydnas were wiped out and replaced with lineages from SE Asia. The Chinese have gotten multiple papers published that basically deny Out of Africa.

 

[Leopoldo Leone]

What samples? I think we have to be really careful about the Imperial and some Late Antiquity Roman samples. Many of them seem to be immigtants in cosmopolitan port cities. Most of the samples didn't come from the more "indigenous" rural villages and small towns where the majority lived.

I believe he is referring to the iron-age/republican samples, when it was very unlikely that there were the high numbers of immigrants recorded in the imperial era. As for south Italians, in every PCA I have seen actually they are (their edge represented by Sicilians and Calabrians) a little bitsy closer to "central Europe" than the Myceneans were, so frankly I don't see how after the 1000 B.C they shifted from Greece to the Levant. Also the vast majority of papers on Italians found a caucaus related gene flow (that they have in common with Greece and Anatolia) and a minority of North African gene flow in Sicily.

 

[Jovialis]

I think it's clear from many evidences that Central and South Italy (Sicily included) became shifted towards the East Mediterranean as a whole (from Greece to the Levant) after the LBA and especially after the mid 1st millennium B.C., but to claim that because of that there was "population replacement" or even that Jews and Italians are "very similar" is so exaggerated that it becomes even ludicrous. Also, I think we have seriously to consider that "Greek colonies" in South Italy and Sicily may actually have involved people of Greek ethnicity but IA Western Anatolian, Cypriot and perhaps (who knows?) even Philistine background, with heavy Levantine and Iranian admixture, so that you can't simply assume that if Levant_N and Iran_N increased in Italians from the BA to the modern era it necessarily came with Jews, Arabs or any other "Semitic" people.

I think we definitely need to see samples from Magna Graecia, as well as Iaypigian tribes.

I may be wrong, but weren't the classical Greek colonists in Iberia, similar to Mycenaean samples?

There is certainly an Iranian-like character in the Italian south, which is I would suspect has been there, and increasing since the Neolithic, given the presence of J2. Antonio et al. 2019 modeled Neolithic Central Italians as 5% WHG, and 95% Greece_N or Central Anatolian_N. I would imagine that CHG/IN levels where higher as you go south. Thus, Southern Italians may have been Greek-like, prior to the Greek colonization.

But getting back to your speculation of IA Anatolian influence, they seem, at least from this graphic, to not be too different from proceeding Anatolians; one with elevated levels of EHG. These samples are from central anatolia, but as I understand it, there was an Anatolian_N - CHG genetic Cline from west to east, which stayed fairly consistent in genetic continuity, from the copper age-onward.

 

[Ygorcs]

I wonder what amateur genetic models those people are doing. I mean, if you make some simple models it's clear Southern Italians/Sicilians and Jews share mostly (but not entirely) the same ancestral components, but proportions vary, and that's even considering only the more "basal" Neolithic to EBA population admixtures. If we make samples considering more recent (and already much more mixed) samples, the difference in genetic history would become even more obvious.

	Distance	GEO_CHG	IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N	Levant_PPNB	MAR_EN	TUR_Barcin_N	WHG	Yamnaya
Italian_Abruzzo	0,00837​ ​ ​	0,2​ ​ ​	8​ ​ ​	11,2​ ​ ​		50,4​ ​ ​	0,6​ ​ ​	29,6​ ​ ​
Italian_Apulia	0,00999​ ​ ​	2​ ​ ​	7,6​ ​ ​	11,6​ ​ ​		51,2​ ​ ​	0,2​ ​ ​	27,4​ ​ ​
Italian_Basilicata	0,00852​ ​ ​	1,6​ ​ ​	8,4​ ​ ​	11,8​ ​ ​		50,6​ ​ ​		27,6​ ​ ​
Italian_Calabria	0,01142​ ​ ​	2,2​ ​ ​	10,6​ ​ ​	9,8​ ​ ​	1​ ​ ​	53,4​ ​ ​		23​ ​ ​
Italian_Campania	0,00918​ ​ ​	2​ ​ ​	9,4​ ​ ​	14,8​ ​ ​		48,4​ ​ ​		25,4​ ​ ​
Italian_Lazio	0,01146​ ​ ​		6,8​ ​ ​	12,2​ ​ ​		49,8​ ​ ​	2,4​ ​ ​	28,8​ ​ ​
Italian_Molise	0,00832​ ​ ​		7,4​ ​ ​	6​ ​ ​		55​ ​ ​	0,2​ ​ ​	31,4​ ​ ​
Sicilian_East	0,01125​ ​ ​	1,4​ ​ ​	9,2​ ​ ​	14,2​ ​ ​	1​ ​ ​	48,2​ ​ ​	2​ ​ ​	24​ ​ ​
Sicilian_West	0,01186​ ​ ​		10,4​ ​ ​	10,2​ ​ ​	2,6​ ​ ​	49,2​ ​ ​	4,4​ ​ ​	23,2​ ​ ​
Ashkenazi_Belarussia	0,00948​ ​ ​		10​ ​ ​	22​ ​ ​	0,8​ ​ ​	37,8​ ​ ​	0,8​ ​ ​	28,6​ ​ ​
Ashkenazi_Germany	0,00887​ ​ ​		11,6​ ​ ​	23,6​ ​ ​	1,8​ ​ ​	39​ ​ ​		24​ ​ ​
Ashkenazi_Lithuania	0,01145​ ​ ​		11​ ​ ​	21,6​ ​ ​	1,2​ ​ ​	37,6​ ​ ​	0,6​ ​ ​	28​ ​ ​
Ashkenazi_Poland	0,01199​ ​ ​		10​ ​ ​	19,6​ ​ ​	1,4​ ​ ​	40,4​ ​ ​	0,4​ ​ ​	28,2​ ​ ​
Ashkenazi_Russia	0,01354​ ​ ​		8,8​ ​ ​	19,2​ ​ ​	1,8​ ​ ​	39​ ​ ​	0,4​ ​ ​	30,8​ ​ ​
Ashkenazi_Ukraine	0,01300​ ​ ​		10​ ​ ​	19​ ​ ​	1,6​ ​ ​	40​ ​ ​	1,2​ ​ ​	28,2​ ​ ​
Italian_Jew	0,00914​ ​ ​	0,2​ ​ ​	12,4​ ​ ​	27​ ​ ​	2​ ​ ​	37,4​ ​ ​		21​ ​ ​
Sephardic_Jew	0,01220​ ​ ​	0,8​ ​ ​	15,4​ ​ ​	19,6​ ​ ​	3,2​ ​ ​	42,8​ ​ ​		18,2​ ​ ​

 

[Palermo Trapani]

If you look with a broad, general, and not very educated lens, the Hungarians and the more northern and northeastern French share roughly the same proportions of ancient ancestral groups. They even plot near each other on a PCA, which measures TWO dimensions let's not forget.

Is anyone going to try to say with a straight face that the Hungarians and the French are the same people, who shared the same genetic history and same culture????

It's utter nonsense.

It's time to get out the history and historical culture books again too. There were no more antithetical and opposed world views, philosophies etc. than those of the Greeks and the Jews. What was valued by one was anathema to the other.

No one's ever heard about the massive revolts by the Jews against their Greek overloads and their statues, and multiple gods,and licentious arenas and sports activities, and even their so-called philosophy? The Maccabees don't ring a bell?

Was there a gradual accommodation of sorts? Did some Jewish scholars write in Greek and try to incorporate Greek thought? Yes.

To say the cultures became similar or anything close to it is ridiculous.

Good grief. What are people doing pontificating on these topics when they don't have the most basic grounding in the history of these times and places.

Yep Angela, agree, you had a similar traditional classic Catholic type education that I had. Not to turn this into a theological discussion, but it is related. The Greek Septuagint translation, done in Alexandria records the Revolt of the Maccabees and both 1 and 2 Maccabees. Anyone here who is Catholic, or grew up Catholic, knows that. The Eastern Orthodox would as well. All you have to do is find a Catholic Bible and those 2 books can be read in English. If you are someone who reads Latin, you can read them in the Vulgate Translation (I can't do that unfortunately). The entire revolt dealt with the tensions between the pagan Greeks and orthodox religious Jews.

 

[ratchet_fan]

Afrocentric revisionism and pseudo-science is becoming an increasingly troublesome matter all over the internet lately, I'm afraid. Quora, where I write very often, is full of their biased and long debunken answers always repeating the same old and lame arguments for the umtpeenth time in the hope that most people won't have seen the many times they were proven completely wrong by commenters and answerers in the same platform (sometimes literally old arguments, using sources that are so outdated that they date from the 19th century or early 1900s, come on!).

But what you wrote amazes me particularly. I mean, sometimes I feel like they are deep down fighting racism coming from racist premises themselves. Why should anyone who is really past racist ideas find it offensive that someone claims (whether correctly or not) that virtually all black African women don't have straight hair? Is straight hair some kind of trophy, a gold standard of genetic superiority? For them to get so triggered by people mentioning the absolute dominance of woolly or extremely curly hair in black Africans, that's what it sounds like they subconsciously think. I also think the same happens when they ignore African cultures and civilizations to keep writing endlessly about the "black origins" of Hebrews, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Punics, Berbers, Romans, Greeks, Olmecs and any other civilization BUT those located south of Egypt. It's as if they think that blacks will have a lot to gain and will be finally be proven just as good as anyone else if it's proven that some Eurasian or North African civilizations was actually created by them or under their heavy influence. Why does it matter so much? Are they perhaps subconsciously implying that people who developed those well known civilizations were/are inherently superior to others who didn't?

I think it's all very sad, because they don't even notice it, but they're trying to fight racism not destroying the premises and assumptions of a racist system, but simply turning the table and claiming that it is actually they who were historically better, wiser, smarter etc. That won't end racism and will ultimately destroy the credibility of a fair cause.

No Eurasian or North African civilization was created by them or under their heavy influence. They can argue all they want but its not gaining any traction except among morons. More people believe Nordicist crap than Afrocentrist crap.

Also your last comment is on point. I've noticed they have an inferiority complex but at the same point they are angry people don't see them as superior.

However, the woke white morons arguing that some obscure SSA civilization matches Rome, Greece or China are just as bad. As someone with no genetic ties to those civilization I can fully admit they were superior civilization to my barbarian ancestors societies.

 

[Riverman]

And how exactly are they quite similar today when the study I posted shows they are 40%-65% middle eastern, and 15%-25% Eastern European? Are you going to also tell me that the study is incorrect?

The study was a nice starter, but it isn't the endpoint of the debate. It has especially two major flaws as was pointed out in the thread on AG:
1st: Lack of proper samples from Central Europe, a very NW shifted "Western" reference
2nd: Lumping all Italian samples into one big source

By doing both, you drastically underestimate the Central European, more German-like admixture and at the same time increase Italian and even more so Eastern European. Now some amateurs can't substitute scientific papers and results, but if the sources are that bad, any amateur with G25 who knows roughly what he's doing will get better results.

I don't say this study is worthless, it isn't. Particularly interesting are the supposed datings for the admixture events, based on sizes. But the reference samples chosen are just bad. Something like one quarter Eastern European admixture for Ashkenazi Jews is just way off. I doubt that we can do a proper estimation with the samples available right now, because there are still no good ancient Jewish and early European "Proto-Ashkenazi" samples out there, but we can already say what's not the case. But even if I'm wrong, and the study is right, you can't prove or disprove it without proper sampling and they have no regional German or other Central European samples used in this study AT ALL. But they lumped "Western" with Orcadian and British in one source and "Southern" with all Italians.
In all my trials AJ need "Imperial Roman" as a source, they surely have Greco-Roman/Hellenistic/ancient Italian ancestry, but the whole set up of this study is insufficient.

 

[Palermo Trapani]

I wonder what amateur genetic models those people are doing. I mean, if you make some simple models it's clear Southern Italians/Sicilians and Jews share mostly (but not entirely) the same ancestral components, but proportions vary, and that's even considering only the more "basal" Neolithic to EBA population admixtures. If we make samples considering more recent (and already much more mixed) samples, the difference in genetic history would become even more obvious.

	Distance	GEO_CHG	IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N	Levant_PPNB	MAR_EN	TUR_Barcin_N	WHG	Yamnaya
Italian_Abruzzo	0,00837​	0,2​	8​	11,2​		50,4​	0,6​	29,6​
Italian_Apulia	0,00999​	2​	7,6​	11,6​		51,2​	0,2​	27,4​
Italian_Basilicata	0,00852​	1,6​	8,4​	11,8​		50,6​		27,6​
Italian_Calabria	0,01142​	2,2​	10,6​	9,8​	1​	53,4​		23​
Italian_Campania	0,00918​	2​	9,4​	14,8​		48,4​		25,4​
Italian_Lazio	0,01146​		6,8​	12,2​		49,8​	2,4​	28,8​
Italian_Molise	0,00832​		7,4​	6​		55​	0,2​	31,4​
Sicilian_East	0,01125​	1,4​	9,2​	14,2​	1​	48,2​	2​	24​
Sicilian_West	0,01186​		10,4​	10,2​	2,6​	49,2​	4,4​	23,2​
Ashkenazi_Belarussia	0,00948​		10​	22​	0,8​	37,8​	0,8​	28,6​
Ashkenazi_Germany	0,00887​		11,6​	23,6​	1,8​	39​		24​
Ashkenazi_Lithuania	0,01145​		11​	21,6​	1,2​	37,6​	0,6​	28​
Ashkenazi_Poland	0,01199​		10​	19,6​	1,4​	40,4​	0,4​	28,2​
Ashkenazi_Russia	0,01354​		8,8​	19,2​	1,8​	39​	0,4​	30,8​
Ashkenazi_Ukraine	0,01300​		10​	19​	1,6​	40​	1,2​	28,2​
Italian_Jew	0,00914​	0,2​	12,4​	27​	2​	37,4​		21​
Sephardic_Jew	0,01220​	0,8​	15,4​	19,6​	3,2​	42,8​		18,2​

Interesting Data. Do you have the data for Jewish groups living in Iran, Iraq, or Levant or other places to compare them to those that have lived in Europe. Eurogenes K13_updated samples has coordinates for Jewish groups in Georgia, Iran, Kurdistan and Libya, Dodecad 12B has sample coordinates for Jewish groups in Cochin_India, Azerbaijan and Iraq (Which i would think is distinguised from Kurdish_Jews, although they could be closely related).

So it would be interesting to see what is, for lack of a better term, direction of causality (I am using this purely in a statistical context). So what is the Y and what are the X variables. Did those Jewish groups in your data move closer to European groups by virtue of ancient immigration from the Levant to Europe, making them closer to Southern Europeans, or is it vice versa.

If you can run your models for those other Jewish Groups, and present the data, I would be interested to see how Southern Italian/Sicilians admixture proportions compare to those other Jewish Groups since my ancestors are all from West_Sicily, Trapani, Palermo and Agrigento (1 Great Grandfather born in mountain village here).

 

[Ygorcs]

In all my trials AJ need "Imperial Roman" as a source, they surely have Greco-Roman/Hellenistic/ancient Italian ancestry, but the whole set up of this study is insufficient.

One major problem in using the average Imperial_Roman sample set is that several of its individuals do not seem to have been East Mediterranean-shifted Italians at all. They definitely look like people who came straight from the Levant: Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians. The authors of the study should have really looked for isotope analysis of all the sample coupled with as extensive as possible archaeological analysis of each burial, because that would've clarified what Imperial Romans must've been like in their large majority (excluding some major coastal port cities with lots of immigrants and big metropolises).

 

[Riverman]

One major problem in using the average Imperial_Roman sample set is that several of its individuals do not seem to have been East Mediterranean-shifted Italians at all. They definitely look like people who came straight from the Levant: Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians. The authors of the study should have really looked for isotope analysis of all the sample coupled with as extensive as possible archaeological analysis of each burial, because that would've clarified what Imperial Romans must've been like in their large majority (excluding some major coastal port cities with lots of immigrants and big metropolises).

If you read the ancient sources, its quite evident that there was a true mass immigration from the East and South. So I doubt isotopes would be a solution, because many were there for generations already. However, as far as I know, the good thing about this sample is that there are also more Northern shifted individuals and in the end they balance things out for the most part. I also don't think there was one Imperial Roman genetic profile, but many dependent on social class and exact region, for Rome itself even neighbourhood. Also, I think that its this mixed Imperial background with a predominance of Greco-Roman, Eastern shifted individuals, which comes closest to the source population for the ancient European Jews. I doubt it was the senatorial class, a Tuscan countryman or the Germanic mercenary, but exactly those people which lived in the urban neighbourhoods.

Also if modelling Italians based on this, you get meaningful results as well I'd say, but this can be debated of course. Simple trial:


I'm not satisfied with Latini in particular, I would like to have a better reference for the average pre-Imperial Italic, but it might suffice for now and Imperial Roman includes a significant portion of it anyway.

 

[Palermo Trapani]

The study was a nice starter, but it isn't the endpoint of the debate. It has especially two major flaws as was pointed out in the thread on AG:
1st: Lack of proper samples from Central Europe, a very NW shifted "Western" reference
2nd: Lumping all Italian samples into one big source

By doing both, you drastically underestimate the Central European, more German-like admixture and at the same time increase Italian and even more so Eastern European. Now some amateurs can't substitute scientific papers and results, but if the sources are that bad, any amateur with G25 who knows roughly what he's doing will get better results.

I don't say this study is worthless, it isn't. Particularly interesting are the supposed datings for the admixture events, based on sizes. But the reference samples chosen are just bad. Something like one quarter Eastern European admixture for Ashkenazi Jews is just way off. I doubt that we can do a proper estimation with the samples available right now, because there are still no good ancient Jewish and early European "Proto-Ashkenazi" samples out there, but we can already say what's not the case. But even if I'm wrong, and the study is right, you can't prove or disprove it without proper sampling and they have no regional German or other Central European samples used in this study AT ALL. But they lumped "Western" with Orcadian and British in one source and "Southern" with all Italians.
In all my trials AJ need "Imperial Roman" as a source, they surely have Greco-Roman/Hellenistic/ancient Italian ancestry, but the whole set up of this study is insufficient.

I am curious, which Imperial Roman source do we need. Antonio et al 2019 analyzed 48 Imperial Romans

From the text, an I quote "During the Imperial period (n = 48 individuals), the most prominent trend is an ancestry shift toward the eastern Mediterraneanand with very few individuals of primarilywestern European ancestry (Fig. 3C). The distribution of Imperial Romans in PCA largelyoverlaps with modern Mediterranean and NearEastern populations, such as Greek, Maltese, Cypriot, and Syrian (Figs. 2A and 3C). This shiftis accompanied by a further increase in theNeolithic Iranian component in ADMIXTURE(Fig. 2B).

"Notably,only 2 out of 48 Imperial-era individuals fall inthe European cluster (C7) to which 8 out of11 Iron Age individuals belong. Instead, two thirds of Imperial individuals (31 out of 48)belong to two major clusters (C5 and C6) thatoverlap in PCA with central and eastern Mediterranean populations, such as those fromsouthern and central Italy, Greece, Cyprus,and Malta (Fig. 4B)."

"An additional quarter (13out of 48) of the sampled Imperial Romansform a cluster (C4) defined by high amountsof haplotype sharing with Levantine and NearEastern populations, whereas no pre-Imperialindividuals appear in this cluster (Fig. 4AC). InPCA, some of the individuals in this clusteralso project close to four contemporaneousindividuals from Lebanon"

The C7 Cluster for those 8 Iron Age Romans is on the Southern End Tuscany to Northern Italy and drifts toward Southern France and Iberia (European Cluster). The other 3 Iron Age Romans cluster Central Italy to Southern Italy (R437 is Southern no doubt with one drifting towards Sardinia.

So the 31 Imperial Romans that fall into C5 and C6 just plot Central Italy on the one end to Southern Italy and Malta (Sicily would be between those 2) then towards Greece and Cyprus.

Yes, 13 fall in Cluster C4, Levant and Near East.

So I am curious which Imperial Age Romans do you propose?

 

[Palermo Trapani]

One major problem in using the average Imperial_Roman sample set is that several of its individuals do not seem to have been East Mediterranean-shifted Italians at all. They definitely look like people who came straight from the Levant: Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians. The authors of the study should have really looked for isotope analysis of all the sample coupled with as extensive as possible archaeological analysis of each burial, because that would've clarified what Imperial Romans must've been like in their large majority (excluding some major coastal port cities with lots of immigrants and big metropolises).

You are correct, the authors of Antonio et al 2019 clearly write that in the paper, 31 of the 48 cluster in C5/C6 which runs from Central Italy to Southern Italy, Malta to Greece and Cyprus.

13 of them cluster with the Levant and Near East, C4 Cluster.

So if I am reading the paper correctly, 13 of them do look like immigrants straight from the Levant, you are correct.

The other 31 seem to sit right on top Southern Italy if you take Central Italy and Greece/Cyprus as the Distributional range, you really can't get more Southern mainland Italian and Sicilian than that, in my humble view.

 

[Riverman]

So I am curious which Imperial Age Romans do you propose?

Please ask Ygorcs, because I just use this sample, in part for the exact same reason as you said.

I think it wouldn't hurt to get more differentiation, rather than lumping all ancestry components into one, but as an average it may suffice. As you can see in my amateurish run from above, many Italians and Greeks can be modelled with this Imperial average the best - there is no better sample available right now. And all the Italians are now more Northern shifted, in part because this ancestry was never dominant there, or because of the resurgence from the local rural population and migration from other Italian regions and because of the Northern, mainly Germanic, immigration.
The only Italian group which needs a significant additional Near Eastern source in my runs is Sicilian West by the way. For all others Imperial_Roman can suffice.

 

[Angela]

I believe he is referring to the iron-age/republican samples, when it was very unlikely that there were the high numbers of immigrants recorded in the imperial era. As for south Italians, in every PCA I have seen actually they are (their edge represented by Sicilians and Calabrians) a little bitsy closer to "central Europe" than the Myceneans were, so frankly I don't see how after the 1000 B.C they shifted from Greece to the Levant. Also the vast majority of papers on Italians found a caucaus related gene flow (that they have in common with Greece and Anatolia) and a minority of North African gene flow in Sicily.

Exactly so, although you'd never know that listening to the folks over Anthrogenica.


To the Board:
Anyone who thinks Davidski's modeling has been objective clearly hasn't been paying attention. I have the Brooklyn Bridge on offer for a very good price.

 

[ratchet_fan]

Exactly so, although you'd never know that listening to the folks over Anthrogenica.


To the Board:
Anyone who thinks Davidski's modeling has been objective clearly hasn't been paying attention. I have the Brooklyn Bridge on offer for a very good price.

I agree with the last statement. Almost every amateur has an agenda imo. At the same time there's flaws in academia due to bias as well (those Chinese papers for example) or just ignorance.

 

[Palermo Trapani]

Please ask Ygorcs, because I just use this sample, in part for the exact same reason as you said.

I think it wouldn't hurt to get more differentiation, rather than lumping all ancestry components into one, but as an average it may suffice. As you can see in my amateurish run from above, many Italians and Greeks can be modelled with this Imperial average the best - there is no better sample available right now. And all the Italians are now more Northern shifted, in part because this ancestry was never dominant there, or because of the resurgence from the local rural population and migration from other Italian regions and because of the Northern, mainly Germanic, immigration.
The only Italian group which needs a significant additional Near Eastern source in my runs is Sicilian West by the way. For all others Imperial_Roman can suffice.

The additional Near East in Sicilian West does not totally surprise me and I have always acknowledged that there is some Levant admixture in Sicily, that obviously is more recent than what was documented in some of the Imperial Roman samples. I get 3% Northern Levant type based on my Ancestry and NATGENO analysis using the overlap between the 2, Ancestry DNA estimate for autosonal, 97% Italian 3% Middle East with the range being from Egypt to Turkey. NATGENO gives me 71% Italic/Southern Europe, 14% West Med, which they label as Sardinian, Corsican and up to mainland Italy drifting across to Iberia, NW Europe 7% and then Anatolia 8%, from Northern Levant to Armenia. From there own site, they test source DNA from 500AD to 10,000 BC roughly.

So the overlap of NATGENO seems for me to be Northern Levant, best I can tell. Which is consistent with 1) Pheonicians coming from there, 2) as Antonio et al 2019 documented, the Imperial period migrants came from the East, not the Western part of the empire, and 3) The Saracens who invaded Sicily were part of the later Abbasids, the general who led the invasion was a Mesopotamian, Asad ibn al-Furat, born in modern Haran, Turkey and the Abbasids were based in Syria (Levant) before moving to Baghdad, which they built.

I have always contended the the ancestry that is Near East in Sicily is mostly Levantine, some could be ancient (Pheonician, maybe some earlier) with some Berber ancestry associated with Tunisian Berbers. The Abbasid dynasty went from Tunisia back to Persia. So I am not one of these people that gets crazy about some Levantine admixture into Sicily via either the Phoenicians and their successors the Carthiginians and the later Saracens.

However, just for the record, I don't care for those Eurogenes models as a general rule, not for any personal reasons, only that they seem to not calibrate with the published Results of Antonio et al 2019. I think Jovialis ran a what I call a "Statistical Horse race" and the Dodecad 13B, Dodecad7 and MDLP16 all produced results more in line with Antonio et al 2019 Figure 2 plots than the Eurogenes calculators. At least that is how I remember it.

Cheers, PT

 

[Angela]

I wonder what amateur genetic models those people are doing. I mean, if you make some simple models it's clear Southern Italians/Sicilians and Jews share mostly (but not entirely) the same ancestral components, but proportions vary, and that's even considering only the more "basal" Neolithic to EBA population admixtures. If we make samples considering more recent (and already much more mixed) samples, the difference in genetic history would become even more obvious.

	Distance	GEO_CHG	IRN_Ganj_Dareh_N	Levant_PPNB	MAR_EN	TUR_Barcin_N	WHG	Yamnaya
Italian_Abruzzo	0,00837​	0,2​	8​	11,2​		50,4​	0,6​	29,6​
Italian_Apulia	0,00999​	2​	7,6​	11,6​		51,2​	0,2​	27,4​
Italian_Basilicata	0,00852​	1,6​	8,4​	11,8​		50,6​		27,6​
Italian_Calabria	0,01142​	2,2​	10,6​	9,8​	1​	53,4​		23​
Italian_Campania	0,00918​	2​	9,4​	14,8​		48,4​		25,4​
Italian_Lazio	0,01146​		6,8​	12,2​		49,8​	2,4​	28,8​
Italian_Molise	0,00832​		7,4​	6​		55​	0,2​	31,4​
Sicilian_East	0,01125​	1,4​	9,2​	14,2​	1​	48,2​	2​	24​
Sicilian_West	0,01186​		10,4​	10,2​	2,6​	49,2​	4,4​	23,2​
Ashkenazi_Belarussia	0,00948​		10​	22​	0,8​	37,8​	0,8​	28,6​
Ashkenazi_Germany	0,00887​		11,6​	23,6​	1,8​	39​		24​
Ashkenazi_Lithuania	0,01145​		11​	21,6​	1,2​	37,6​	0,6​	28​
Ashkenazi_Poland	0,01199​		10​	19,6​	1,4​	40,4​	0,4​	28,2​
Ashkenazi_Russia	0,01354​		8,8​	19,2​	1,8​	39​	0,4​	30,8​
Ashkenazi_Ukraine	0,01300​		10​	19​	1,6​	40​	1,2​	28,2​
Italian_Jew	0,00914​	0,2​	12,4​	27​	2​	37,4​		21​
Sephardic_Jew	0,01220​	0,8​	15,4​	19,6​	3,2​	42,8​		18,2​

Sorry, I think this is misleading as well. No separate group of Levant PPNB people went to Italy.

If the goal, for whatever reason, is to quantify the amount of "LEVANT" ancestry in southern Italy post the Bronze Age, then we should wait until we have a good set of Bronze Age samples from both Sicily and Southern Italy, and use some proximate sources like actual Syrians etc. from the Levant in the first millennium BC and Empire, as well as samples of Anatolians and Greeks from the same era.

 

[Jovialis]

Exactly so, although you'd never know that listening to the folks over Anthrogenica.


To the Board:
Anyone who thinks Davidski's modeling has been objective clearly hasn't been paying attention. I have the Brooklyn Bridge on offer for a very good price.

Indeed, and there is no way in hell G25 is more sophisticated than academic software analysis interpreted by multiped academics.

It is like ignoring multiple opinions of medical professionals, and going with some holistic-approach. Though I'm sure there are plenty of loons on the internet that would say otherwise.

 

[Riverman]

The additional Near East in Sicilian West does not totally surprise me and I have always acknowledged that there is some Levant admixture in Sicily, that obviously is more recent than what was documented in some of the Imperial Roman samples. I get 3% Northern Levant type based on my Ancestry and NATGENO analysis using the overlap between the 2, Ancestry DNA estimate for autosonal, 97% Italian 3% Middle East with the range being from Egypt to Turkey. NATGENO gives me 71% Italic/Southern Europe, 14% West Med, which they label as Sardinian, Corsican and up to mainland Italy drifting across to Iberia, NW Europe 7% and then Anatolia 8%, from Northern Levant to Armenia. From there own site, they test source DNA from 500AD to 10,000 BC roughly.

So the overlap of NATGENO seems for me to be Northern Levant, best I can tell. Which is consistent with 1) Pheonicians coming from there, 2) as Antonio et al 2019 documented, the Imperial period migrants came from the East, not the Western part of the empire, and 3) The Saracens who invaded Sicily were part of the later Abbasids, the general who led the invasion was a Mesopotamian, Asad ibn al-Furat, born in modern Haran, Turkey and the Abbasids were based in Syria (Levant) before moving to Baghdad, which they built.

I have always contended the the ancestry that is Near East in Sicily is mostly Levantine, some could be ancient (Pheonician, maybe some earlier) with some Berber ancestry associated with Tunisian Berbers. The Abbasid dynasty went from Tunisia back to Persia. So I am not one of these people that gets crazy about some Levantine admixture into Sicily via either the Phoenicians and their successors the Carthiginians and the later Saracens.

If someone would have asked for where this East/South shift in Western Sicilians is coming from, I would have said roughly the same. I think we can't say for sure, regardless which model you use, until we have high resolution samples from all potential candidates. Especially Phoenicians vs. general East Mediterranean immigration vs. later Muslim/Saracen influx. I'd say all three happened, but what was more important. Its however interesting, even if your opinion of the calculators is not that high, that Sicilian West can be clearly distinguished in this respect from Sicilian East.

Indeed, and there is no way in hell G25 is more sophisticated than academic software analysis interpreted by multiped academics.

Well, you are certainly right about the tools, but many amateurs use these tools too, many are freely available. And while the G25 analysis in itself is not superiour technically, if an academic study doesn't use the right samples and the complex programs being not used properly, the result might be much worse by a margin. And even peer review doesn't save many papers from those errors. You can be sure about that. Just remind you how long big official papers used no results from Central Europe? Always these CEU sample and Orcadians...
And believe me, academics are not perfect. If they get new programs which can be tweaked a lot, some might fail to use it properly and even peer review is no savior for some of them, especially if the programs are fairly new. You won't believe what can go wrong in academics too, but you should, recent scandals showed it to all.

Not saying I trust amateurs more than scientific papers, but there is reason to be critical to all sources, academics and amateurs. In the end I too hope for a solid paper to pick up a question and solve it sufficiently. But sometimes this is a long wait and bad trials come from both academic professionals and amateurs in meantime. To name a better case, the recent paper on Italian ancestry was good, overall, a solid effort and thanks to it we got this data to begin with.